He Should've Saved Her
by Amalasuintha
Summary: A fanfic for the trilogy "The Devouring". One shot. Takes place two or three years after Fearscape. Aaron returns from his Tracer training to tell Reggie something, but something horrible happens.


"Reggie." Aaron stared ahead, unable to look away. "What… Why?"

Lying five feet away, covered in her own blood, was Regina Halloway. Her long dark hair, something Aaron used to dream of running his fingers through, matted to her scalp and the floor. It took on a reddish tint from the blood. Aaron didn't dare move closer.

"How? Reggie, who did this to you?" His eyes stung as tears welled up in his eyes. His breaths were quick and shallow and grew shakier and shakier every second. Every muscle in his body screamed for him to move; to see if she still lived. She had to; Reggie couldn't die. She couldn't. Not after everything she—they—had gone through!

How could she have survived all those fearscape and saved all those people only to die when Aaron came back to see her. To tell her what he hadn't for so long.

_Did a Vour do this?_

His hands balled into fists, tears streaming down his cheeks. Aaron gathered all the willpower he had to step forward, but collapsed onto his knees. She had been so close at once, then so far away, and now she was impossibly far. He crawled next to her and checked her pulse. A useless gesture; it was clear she was dead.

"Damn it Reggie…" He punched the ground beside her head. "Who did this to you? Tell me, who did this to you so I can..." He choked on a sob. Aaron's body trembled with grief. It was all too much.

Then she opened her eyes.

"Reggie?" he screamed. She silenced him by gripping his throat and leaning into him. She'd gone pale and her lips were blue, her eyes milky white. Reggie's appearance disturbed Aaron more than he'd admit.

"You want to know who killed me?" she rasped. "You did! You killed me Aaron. It's all your fault. If only you had turned down the Tracers I would still be alive. You could've saved me!"

"No!" he wailed. "I didn't do it Reggie. It wasn't me—I joined them so I could protect you!"

"EXCUSES!" She shrieked and threw him across the room. He slammed into the wall, whimpering softly as his head hit the wall and then the floor. Reggie staggered to her feet. "Because of you not only am I dead, but so is my child…"

"Child?"

"And it's Quinn's! It's his and only his—it isn't yours, nor would it ever be!"

Aaron rolled onto his stomach and groaned. He knew what this was. It was a Vour's work; they were showing him one of his greatest fears.

Originally his greatest fear was drowning, and he still felt pure terror when it came down to it, but the Vours discovered his other fear: Losing Reggie. He loved her and hated how content Quinn made her feel. Secretly he wished Quinn was out of the picture, and so they preyed on that and made him see the one thing worse than a dead Reggie: A dead Reggie pregnant with Quinn's child.

He climbed to his feet as Reggie shambled towards him. "You're not real," he said, then louder: "You're not real. You aren't Reggie; Reggie's alive. And not pregnant." He felt the clarification necessary.

"But you know she will be," Reggie hissed. "One day she'll slut around with the formerly Vourized Quinn and when she tells you the news you'll die a little inside. And you know they'll probably marry either before and after it's born. How will you ever survive knowing your sweet Regina is happy with another man? That she doesn't love you? That she led you on, telling you when she regained strength when in the Core with Macie was when she said your name and thought about you and only you? It makes you mad, doesn't it?" Reggie stood with her body pressed against Aaron now and he was pressed against the wall. She leaned in even more and whispered, "It makes you want to kill her, doesn't it?"

To get out of this Aaron knew he had to defeat his fear somehow. To make it happy; to control the hallucination. But no one messed with _his_ Reggie and got away with it, hallucination or not.

He tackled Reggie to the ground. She shrieked and clawed at him but Aaron was stronger. He straddled her and furled his fists. "This is for getting in my mind you evil bastard!" He punched her and flinched. He punched her again and, again, flinched. It wasn't easy beating her but Aaron kept telling himself it was a hallucination. This wasn't really Reggie; this was a monster impersonating her.

He kept punching.

* * *

Reggie shrieked. She begged Aaron to stop; told him it really was her, that a Vour was making him hallucinate everything, but she couldn't reach him. "Somebody! Machen! Quinn! Please!" Reggie started sobbing. She would've resorted to using her power on Aaron but his constant punches, slamming her head into the hard floor, rendered her practically helpless. She felt her life slipping away and her eyes, which already began swelling, closed.

"Please, stop…"

* * *

Machen wrestled Aaron off of her. "Aaron! Aaron, what are you doing?"

"Reggie!" Quinn ran to her side. Now she really laid on the ground lifeless and covered in blood.

Aaron fought against Machen briefly but his frenzy and hallucination quickly faded. "Machen, what are you—" He couldn't finish before Quinn stood back up and punched Aaron square in the jaw.

"She's dead! She's dead and you killed her!"

"What? But… It was a hallucination…" He looked back and forth from the angry Quinn to the sullen Machen. "No. No. I didn't. I couldn't—" Aaron noticed the blood on Quinn's hands before he looked over and saw Reggie. He didn't say anything; Aaron simply went into hysterics. The last thing Aaron saw before blacking out was the ceiling and Quinn trying to beat the life out of Aaron for beating the life out of Reggie.

* * *

Several weeks later Machen walked into Aaron's bedroom. It was bare save for a small desk and a bed with no sheets, or pillow. The desk's edges were filed down so that they weren't the slightest bit sharp. Aaron sat on the bed staring at his feet with his head in his hands, like always.

"Let me out of here, Machen. I don't want to stay here."

"And let you go off and kill yourself?" Machen sighed. Aaron hadn't recovered from the "incident." No one expected him to either, which made it all the more worse. Only Henry, Reggie's younger brother, seemed to have faith Aaron would get better. "Henry says he misses you."

"No he doesn't," Aaron whispered. "He doesn't want to see me again. I know he doesn't."

"Henry is probably the most upset about this than anyone else, but he seems to also understand the most that it was a Vour who killed Reggie, not you."

"You're wrong!" Aaron abruptly stood. Machen tensed, expecting Aaron to hit him. Thankfully, that didn't happen. "It wasn't a Vour who killed Reggie, it was me. It… It's my fault. I let my anger and grief the vision gave me take over and I thought I was beating a hallucination. I killed her and I enjoyed every second I hit her!"

"That's not true," Machen said, raising his voice. "That's not true and you know it isn't! Aaron, I know you're grieving and you may never completely forgive yourself for what happened. I can't make you do that. But, on the off chance you do realize that if Reggie were alive today she wouldn't blame you, knowing it was the Vour's fault, I won't let you go while knowing full well what you'll do. If anything, try to forgive yourself not for your sake or mine or Reggie's; do it for Henry."

Machen excused himself and left, the door locking behind him. Aaron fell back onto his bed. He felt the tears coming on again. It felt like he'd never escape them or his grief. He should've been stronger; he should've known a Vour wanted to trap him into killing Reggie.

He should've protected her.


End file.
